LinkedIn Advertising Advocate A.J. Wilcox Made a Quick Shift –

A.J. Wilcox was terminated by Domo.

Five months later, the northern Utahn was at an after-party with an idol and making significantly more money than ever before.

Now, 40 percent of his work involves public visibility, with perhaps a full one-third of that in the super-sexy spaces of public speaking, advocacy and podcasts. Over the past two years, he was a speaker at at least 15 different events, as of last month.

The secret, Wilcox said: having an exclusive on industry knowledge.

“I was really blessed by the fact that I found a very narrow niche,” said Wilcox, founder of B2Linked. “I could have started another ad agency of Google keywords and Facebook ads and not been as successful, but… because (LinkedIn ads) is niche and deep… I essentially don’t have competition around this topic.”

A quick shift

Wilcox had been an online marketer since 2007. He was introduced in 2011 to advertising on LinkedIn. He did that for Domo until late 2014, when he was let go.

“Frankly, I figured that it likely wasn’t a good platform because I hadn’t heard of it before then,” Wilcox has written. As he told me, “the deeper I went with LinkedIn advertising, I started realizing how cool it is.”

Wilcox didn’t appear to reveal any LinkedIn advertising knowledge in our interview. But he did talk about being an advocate, or “evangelist,” for LinkedIn advertising, where he has five employees helping him.

Wilcox didn’t appear to reveal any LinkedIn advertising knowledge in our interview. But he did talk about being an advocate, or “evangelist,” for LinkedIn advertising, where he has five employees helping him.

Wilcox would spend 12 hours writing a blog post but could record a podcast or video in much less time and get many more leads – as many as 90. That came after Wilcox was on the podcast Entrepreneur on Fire. John Lee Dumas is the host and that’s who Wilcox partied with after being a fan of the podcast before his company took off.

Wilcox was terminated by Domo in Oct. 2014.

“I am very grateful,” he said. “It’s the best thing that happened to me in my entire life.”In month one of the five, he tried to find people on Upwork.com who would benefit from his services; in month two, he attended many in-person networking events, asking how to meet people and pitch.

Month three marked his first speaking engagement.

But he still applied for other jobs after that. He got four offers that paid 30 and 40 percent more than other positions.